What cost for security?

The fruits of Microsoft's new focus on security are coming through, but it has cost money, says vice president in a .Net server preview.

Microsoft's much-publicised security push has cost real money -- $100m of person-hours went into the two-month hiatus in development of .Net server, according to David Thompson, vice president of Microsoft's Windows server products group.

Close to 5000 people in the development team spent all of February and March learning security, Thompson told the Microsoft Tech Ed conference in Barcelona. This alone cost Microsoft $100m, as well as putting back product schedules. Other product development teams will incur similar costs, he said.

"Every developer feels it is now a matter of pride that they have to write secure code," said Thompson, denying that Microsoft developers might have found it hard to adjust from writing "cool" code to writing "secure" code. "The team was remarkably excited, at being given the chance to focus on an area that has a lot of public visibility." Sceptical, moi?

News source: ZDNet UK